TV DRAMA SHEDS NEW LIGHT ON WELSH COP’S ROLE IN THE CASE THAT SHOCKED A NATION
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NEW ITV real-life crime drama is to dramatise the notorious 1985 murders in which couple Nevill and June Bamber, their adopted daughter Sheila and her twin sons were gunned down at the family’s Essex home, White House Farm.
It will throw a fresh spotlight on the role of the police, particularly muchcriticised Welshman DCI Thomas “Taff” Jones, who believed the case to be clear cut and that Sheila Caffell, a diagnosed schizophrenic, had committed murder-suicide with a rifle.
Despite what seemed like a straightforward case, investigators questioned how Ms Caffell could have shot herself twice with a rifle and attention turned to the one remaining family member – the man who had raised the alarm – Sheila’s adoptive brother, Jeremy Bamber.
The show, White House Farm, airs on ITV from Wednesday and stars
Freddie Fox as Jeremy Bamber, Cressida Bonas – Prince Harry’s exgirlfriend – and The Irishman and Line of Duty actor Stephen Graham as Thomas “Taff” Jones.
Jones, deputy head of Essex Police CID, was keen to get the case done and dusted and clashes on-screen with colleague DS Stan Jones, played by Game of Thrones star Mark Addy.
DCI Jones was sold on Sheila’s guilt over the murders and sought to beat down anyone who attempted to think otherwise.
A special report into the murders by author Carol Ann Lee – who wrote The Murders At White House Farm for the Mail on Sunday in 2015 – describes how DCI Jones had arrived at the scene, looked at Sheila’s body and concluded that she had taken her own life.
She also wrote: “Jones was not a man to brook dissent. ‘ Because Taff had made up his mind, it ceased to be a crime scene,’ one officer recalled. ‘Ordinarily, it would have been taped off, but too many boots had been in already. I was ordered ‘get in there, get it sorted and the coroner’s report done.’ ”
Another investigation into the case, which appeared in The Independent in 2010, alleged DCI Jones went to play golf after hearing it was a “domestic” incident.
When Bamber’s cousins asked DCI Jones to consider Bamber as the murderer, he is said to have ordered them out of the office.
When the tide started to turn on the case and attention switched to Jeremy Bamber’s involvement, DCI Jones was removed from the case due to “operational reasons”, according to the Daily Mail.
Before Bamber’s case even went to trial – in October 1986 – DCI Jones is reported to have died after falling from a ladder at his home.
After a statement about Bamber’s hatred of his family by girlfriend Julie Mugford and his alleged plans to kill his family to inherit their fortune, he was arrested a month after the murders, on September 8, 1985.
His trial in October 1986 saw him found guilty by a majority of 10 to two. He was sentenced to five life terms and he was told by Michael Howard, the Home Secretary in 1994, that he would remain in prison for the rest of his life.
Bamber still maintains his innocence and has lodged several appeals against his conviction and whole-life tariff.
White House Farm starts on ITV on Wednesday, January 8, at 9pm